Scott Kelby aka Photoshop Insider provides these useful articles about light equipment for photographers. There are five parts are describing all possible cases for studio- and wedding/event shooting.

Day 1: Wedding/Portrait Location Lighting Setup (on a Budget)

I think these hot shoe flash units are ideal for wedding and/or event photographers, or photographers who do on-location portraits. The key benefits are:

1. Low cost
2. Small Size
3. Portability
4. Flexibility

To do this right, I would tell a friend they’re going to need these four things:

1. The shoe mount flash unit itself
2. A lightweight portable light stand
3. An adapter so they can mount their flash on that lightstand
4. Some kind of diffuser to soften and spread the light from their flash

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Day 2: Additional equipment

There are two main things I’d tell a friend to get next:

1. An additional hot shoe flash unit
   This gives you the ability to add a hair light, light a bride from behind, light a background, light a room interior, and about a dozen other things that will give your lighting a more professional look.
2. A Reflector
   This will help you fill in hard shadows on the opposite side of your subject’s face, and create a smoother more professional looking transition from the bright side of your subjects face to the shadow side facing away from the camera. It kind of acts like a second light, which is particularly important if your second flash is doing something else

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Day 3: Continious lights for studio

We’re moving into the studio, and we’re starting with a lighting set-up that is ideal for:

• Product photography
• Portrait photography
• Studio photography of anything that doesn’t move a whole lot
• Anyone who wants to get into studio lighting, but is unsure, afraid, or uncomfortable with the whole studio lighting world.

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Day 4: Pro-quality studio flash

Here’s the thing: I could spend the day talking about really low cost strobes, but when it comes to strobes, this is one area where buying the “good stuff” really pays off (I learned this the hard way).

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Day 5: Wrap-up studio lights

Shooting on location has its own challenges:

1. When you’re shooting on location, one of the biggest hurdles you may have to face is electrical power. Even indoors, you might not have access to an electrical outlet anywhere nearby to power your lights (believe me, I learned this the hard way at a bridal shoot in an old church). So that’s the first consideration.
2. Secondly, if you’re shooting outdoors in daylight, you’re going to need a fairly significant amount of “flash” power, and perhaps even a long throw parabolic reflector (attached to the front of your strobe) to shoot the light from your strobe farther and brighter than you normally would.
3. On location, you often wind up with bigger “props” in your shots (like pianos, cars, motorcycles, boats, furniture, etc.), or you wind up doing group shots where you need a lot of coverage.

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Scott Kelby is the editor and publisher of Photoshop User Magazine, Layers magazine (the how-to magazine for everything Adobe®) and President of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).

Last update: 21-03-2008 19:07